A broad.

[jacktellslies]

Perhaps I've failed to mention this, but I'll be travelling in Europe and Northern Africa for an as yet undetermined number of months beginning in late July. I'd like to explore Ireland and the UK in more detail than I did when I actually lived there or within reasonable proximity. I want to see Venice, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Prague. I'll spend some time in France in an effort to make my attempts at croaking out a few phrases in any language other than my native tongue slightly less embarrassing before exploring Morocco, Egypt, and the Dead Sea. Any itinerary I make is to be a skeleton at best. I'll count anything less than aimless wandering as a failure.

I just bought my ticket. I'm not buying a ticket home until I'm ready to do so.

I'll arrive in Dublin. I'll leave New York on July twenty-third, and I'll touch land again around nine-thirty in the morning the next day. I'll spend a week or so in Ireland wandering about. Irish friends! If you should happen to be free at all in the last week in July, may I buy you a drink? You're in Dublin and Cork these days, yes?

As for the rest of you: if I may, I'd like to request that you tell me tales. If there are any places in that quadrant of the globe with which you're particularly in love, anything I should attempt to experience or avoid, any general advice you might have, I'd be eternally grateful if you told me about it. If you lack actual experiences there, I encourage you to tell me fantastic lies that I'll attempt to shape into unlikely realities anyway. I'll thank you if you let me know whether I'm chasing fictions or facts, however. Figuring out bus schedules for real places with the handicap of a maddeningly inconsistent internet connection is quite difficult enough.

Comments

[manningkrull.livejournal.com]

I'll respond to that last part when I have more time (and feel free to ask me anything specific; I've been most everywhere in Europe), but real quick, do you need a place to stay in Paris? We love having guests, and any acquaintance of mine is always welcome.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

The internet is a terrifyingly small place sometimes, isn't it?

That would be magnificent! You're so kind to offer!

[osmundaceae.livejournal.com]

I've been to Amsterdam many times and may be able to give you some tips if you have any questions about that city. Also, tamisevens just moved there and she's really cool...she would probably be a fantastic person to meet up with if you haven't already got a crew there.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

Your photographs from your most recent trip were ultimately what convinced me to travel again. You found such beautiful places! I plan to go back and reread some of those posts, and then perhaps bother you with a few questions, if you wouldn't mind.

Thank you for the tip! I'll check out her blog.

[osmundaceae.livejournal.com]

I thought I should mention that we really love taking these little guidebooks with us when we travel. They're cheap, lightweight, and have great metro, etc maps in them. They break down cities into neighborhoods and they're great guides for random wandering and exploring!

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

Lovely, thank you!

[martygreene.livejournal.com]

The water in Israel is lovely. The people are friendly and amazing. The food is great. Buying Dead-Sea mineral based products is killing the Dead Sea, so please don't do it. Masada is awesome, and worth walking up the Roman Ramp even though it wears you the hell out. Any questions about Israel, and lemme know. Oh- if you've been there you won't be able to get into an arabic country, and vise-verse.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! I imagined that would be the case; the Dead Sea doesn't exactly strike me as a renewable resource. One of my friends who was just there was telling me about Masada, it's certainly on my list. He did fine going from Egypt to Israel, but also warned me that going to Israel first would be a problem. If I go from Marrakech to Cairo to Israel should I be all right?

[osmundaceae.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, I just spied this thread and hadn't noticed you were planning on seeing Israel. I went many years ago, but floating in the Dead Sea is one of the most poignant memories of my life!! Also ditto on Masada turning your legs to fucked up jelly for a day or two afterwards.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

I love salt so much, I figure I can't miss it.

[the-laugh.livejournal.com]

Ohhh have fun. You know,if you go to Germany, you could see with Shannon Harrity. She is over there by herself since Hunter is in Iraq. If you want, I can give you her contact info.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

Wait, Jesus, Mike Hunter? They're still together? And he's in Iraq. Fuck.

[the-laugh.livejournal.com]

They're married!!! He is leaving for Iraq anyday now.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

Good lord! That's wonderful, and that's awful. Had they both been living in Germany? What were they doing there?

[the-laugh.livejournal.com]

Umm they moved there in August. Mike's in the army and he had a choice:
Not re-enlist and get stationed in Louisana
Re-enlist and go to Upper New York
or
Re-enlist and move to Germany (which has one of the best bases.)

They have a cat named Leo. They seem happy, besides the Iraq shit.

[(Anonymous)]

PS. I am so proud of Shannon for being brave enough to move away, that I love talking about this.

[the-laugh.livejournal.com]

Ugh, that was me. Sorry!!

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

Seriously! Good for her. My grandmother was a military wife. She moved five kids from DC to Hawaii, back to DC, to the Philippines, et cetera. My grandfather was off in a submarine somewhere for most of it. They're brave ladies.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

Goodness.

[devotdsatellite.livejournal.com]

lisbon, portugal

[randiriel.livejournal.com]

Are you going to be there very long? Will you be checking your email? Because there is a rather slight chance that I will be wandering about some of those countries myself, in the late summer/early fall. If this is, in fact, the case, perhaps you would be interested in getting lost together for a bit? If this is an alone travel thing, then nevermind. We could, at least, meet for a drink on foriegn shores, however.

The problem being that I will not know if it's at all possible for me to go wandering until a while after you've already left the states, and that may make being in the same place at the same time difficult.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

I'm bringing my laptop with me. I may be at the mercy of available wireless connections, but my hopeless addiction to the internet makes it fairly likely that I'll get any news within three minutes of your posting it.

Darling, we've been planning to run away to Europe together for a thousand years. This is the best news I've ever received. I'm cancelling all of my rain dances for the foreseeable future and replacing them all with please-let-me-travel-with-Whitney dances. I hope you'll tell me more of your plans?

[lilacfaeryboy.livejournal.com]

Yay! Fabulous! I have no plans for July at the moment, so I shall minimize any potential plans!
It would be fab to see you!

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

Magnificent!

[etzelism.livejournal.com]

If all goes according to plan, I will be in Bologna from September through January.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! What will you be doing there?

[belovdpoet.livejournal.com]

I loved Galway while I was there studying, but it's not that big a city, and might be too quiet for your tastes. By its own standards, it's a tolerant place, in that it has two gay bars, instead of none like most other places. If you get the chance, go explore some of western Ireland, in case you ever wondered where all the fairytale settings in books and movies come from.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

It sounds lovely. I've spent a bit of time on my family's farm in Sligo, and they took me to see the shrine at Knock.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I could tell you stories of Cambridge, but they would make me cry with homesickness.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

Oh, you poor love! I'll hide you in my luggage.

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

We've been attempting to make The Fort a recognisable entity, but this might be a different endeavour.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

What is The Fort, and what is it recognisable as?

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

My home, Fort Ellsworth! Once a Chinese restaurant and dive bar, it is now a decaying ruin on the border of South Philadelphia and French Algeria.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I did not know this! Do the inhabitants have to have arrived due to running away to join the French Foreign Legion under the great and spicy General Tso because of some terrible yet romantic event in their homeland?

What is it recognisable as now?

[earlofgrey.livejournal.com]

It certainly helps.

Unfortunately, we grew a bit lax in the winter. We're working on returning its reputation to its former glories.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I am intrigued. But you are leaving it! and then where will its reputation be? In the wrong kind of tatters, perhaps.